New Zealand

Caught the bus from our hotel to the terminal at 5:45am, it was a wee bit overcrowded so when the bus driver announced that we'd arrived at the domestic terminal and someone from within the depths of the crowd cried "I need to get off" it resulted in half the bus having to alight and then re-board.

Anyway, we checked in and went through security all pretty quickly after that and had a look at the shops trying to get rid of the abundance of kiwi coins we'd accumulated. This resulted in more Cookie Time cookies and some Whittaker’s Tweats to take home with us – yummy!

Once our gate appeared on the departure screen we headed there and I think we walked the entire length of the airport. Shortly after arriving we were called to board and did so. It was a smaller plane and the flight wasn't full. We went back through our photos to pass the time and when we arrived in Sydney sat on the plane for a while waiting for a gate to become available.

When we arrived at baggage claim we waited even longer for our bag to show up. Once we had it though we were through customs in about 5 minutes. We then jumped on the T-Bus and got off at Domestic. Check in and security were super-fast and we ended up with an hour to spare before our next flight so we grabbed some pies and sausage rolls for lunch.

When our flight was called we jumped on the bus and crossed the tarmac to board. Half an hour later we landed and were greeted by some familiar faces. We collected our bags from the new carousel (yes, our airport now has a baggage carousel, how cute) and were finally home with a successful conclusion to my first stint as tour manager.